


city walls (and the men who build them)

by Lywinis



Series: Losers Club (est. 1989) - An IT One-shot Collection [2]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Eddie Kaspbrak Lives, Gen, Soft Eddie Kaspbrak, Tumblr Ask Box Fic, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-09
Updated: 2020-05-09
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:01:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24096985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lywinis/pseuds/Lywinis
Summary: Bill keeps watch by Eddie's bedside.
Relationships: Bill Denbrough & Eddie Kaspbrak
Series: Losers Club (est. 1989) - An IT One-shot Collection [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1730569
Comments: 2
Kudos: 18





	city walls (and the men who build them)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bearfeathers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bearfeathers/gifts), [birkin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/birkin/gifts).



> bearfeathers said:  
> "You need to rest." Bill & Eddie.
>     
>     
>       
>     
>     When we were young the future was so bright
>     The old neighborhood was so alive
>     And every kid on the whole damn street
>     Was gonna make it big and not be beat
>     
>     Now the neighborhood's cracked and torn
>     The kids are grown up but their lives are worn
>     How can one little street
>     Swallow so many lives?
>     
>     -The Offspring, _"The Kids Aren't Alright"_
>     
>     
>     
>     

Bill looks up from his laptop. Eddie's staring at him from the hospital bed, his big brown eyes half-lidded and glassy with both pain and the medication in the IV that's meant to soothe it. Bill smiles at him, brushing his unkempt hair out of his eyes.

“I'll m-m-manage, Eddie,” he says.

Eddie huffs a little snort. “No you won't.”

Bill laughs at that, something bright and genuine about it. Eddie glares at him, though the effect is muted with how groggy Eddie is.

“You always work yourself so hard,” Eddie says. “You take care of us. So you should take care of you, too.”

Bill pauses, watching Eddie. There's an earnestness about it that he's missed, something bubbling up in Eddie from a long time ago, when he was a loud little kid who hated the word delicate when used to describe him, but Bill remembers the snap of bone and Eddie's screaming, even all these years later. Now, he has a bandage across his entire shoulder, a brace that keeps Eddie from shifting it and grinding the bones together.

Eddie is beaten to hell and back, but he's here. He's alive and still breathing and the doctors have even said he'll keep the arm. It's a fucking miracle, Bill thinks, and he's glad for it.

He doesn't think he can take losing anyone else.

Really, it's also a miracle it's just the two of them right now. Beverly has bullied Richie in to going to the Inn and showering, maybe sleeping somewhere that isn't right beside Eddie's bed in the hard plastic chairs that the hospital provides. Mike is out clearing up loose ends, Ben alongside him. Bill has volunteered to keep watch at Eddie's bedside; even with Bowers gone and Pennywise destroyed, who knows what happens next, and none of them want to be caught alone or flat-footed.

“You take care of us, t-t-too,” he says at long last. “You always did.”

Eddie frowns at him. “No, I didn't. I was a fucking hypochondriac mess.”

“Who stitched up B-b-ben when Bowers tried to skewer him?” Bill points out. “He doesn't even have a noticeable scar.”

Eddie's cheeks darken and he looks away. “So?”

“So?” Bill parrots back at him. “You always looked out for us. Made sure I was eating when I was looking for G-g-georgie. You were the first one to help Bev clean up the blood in the bathroom—and you fucking got all the blood up. All of it. You knew what to do, Eddie, when all of us were freaking out. You took care of us.”

“We take care of each other,” Eddie says, and though his words are slurring, Bill knows he means it. He closes his laptop and sets it aside, getting up and coming to sit on the edge of Eddie's bed. “You tried to protect us, going after...after It alone. I wish you hadn't.”

“Eddie,” Bill says, but Eddie's face crumples a little and Bill could never stand to see Eddie cry. He hugs his friend, gently so as not to jostle him, pressing his forehead against Eddie's. “In Neibolt. I'm sorry. I yelled at you, I'm—”

“I love you, man,” Eddie says. It's abrupt, meant to forgive Bill his trespasses.

Bill flinches.

He feels that stab of guilt in his torso, but it's softer now, muted. He always felt like he failed Georgie as a big brother, and with the Losers becoming his surrogates, some of that had lessened. He'd failed them, too.

He remembers how his knuckles stung, after punching Richie. He remembers the fear and resentment and anger. He remembers wanting nothing more than to bring Georgie home, even knowing that he was dead. He's always failed them.

He'd shouted at Eddie for locking up, and Eddie had been hurt because of him. Because he'd made them promise.

Except...they'd chosen to return. They'd chosen to rally around him and lift him up and yank him out of the muck. They'd helped him find closure, and he'd helped them find their own.

It's very like Eddie to cut to the heart of the problem, to slice away the darkness lingering there and shine the light on exactly what matters.

“I love you too, Eddie,” Bill says. And he means it.

He always has. He loves all of them, all seven. Bound in blood and inked in friendship, they're the best of him and the worst of him and they take everything he is and give it back a hundredfold. He's their big brother, but they're his siblings. Different parents, but they belong. They always have.

Eddie falls asleep soon after, and Bill eases him back onto the bed, tucking him in and smoothing the blankets. He needs the rest; he's healing rapidly, far too rapidly for what the doctors projected, but Bill thinks that maybe that has to do with...something else. Something that had made their scars disappear and brought them full circle into the light of day.

He's not sure. He's exhausted, really. Still, he returns to his laptop, opening it again and getting back to work. He wants to tell this story right.

It's the only one with a proper ending, after all.

**Author's Note:**

> Bill has a bit of a martyr complex. And a whoooole lot of survivor's guilt. And I think, out of everything in canon, he probably regrets yelling at Eddie about spider!Stan more than anything due to what happened after.
> 
> Thankfully, I have decided that canon is stupid.


End file.
